Theresa May's Week of Dismay Continues as UK GDP Puts It Last in G7 for Growth

It's not the best of times for UK Prime Minister Theresa May - not only is she losing the huge landslide that she held at the start of the election campaign, she is also faced with the UK's current Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figure putting the country at the bottom of the G7 list.

The GDP figures, published by Canada on May 31, confirmed what many financial experts and economists already knew. The UK's 0.2 percent growth in the first quarter of 2017 put it next to Italy as the slowest-growing in the league table of the world's advanced economies.

The figures published showed that the UK economy had been slightly sluggish, house prices fell for the third consecutive month in May, and this is the first time since 2009. Figures for May 2017 also suggested that consumers were feeling the financial pressure, with inflation rising to 2.7 percent, its highest level since September 2013.

​However, forecasts by the Bank of England have suggested inflation will continue to rise, despite weak growth in wages.

"My hunch is that in 2017-18 we will see higher near-term inflation, plus a greater rotation of growth away from consumer spending and towards investment and net trade," said Michael Saunders, a member of the rate-setting monetary policy committee, in a recent interview.

Moody's, a credit ratings agency said that this current slump in the UK's GDP result could be down to Brexit and that Britian's leaving of the EU has caused this slowdown.

"Moody's still expects weaker growth as investment spending slows as Brexit negotiations get under way and consumers feel the impact of accelerating inflation," a spokesperson from Moody's said.

Hello,
!

We are committed to protecting your personal information and we have updated our Privacy Policy to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a new EU regulation that went into effect on May 25, 2018.

Please review our Privacy Policy. It contains details about the types of data we collect, how we use it, and your data protection rights.

Since you already shared your personal data with us when you created your personal account, to continue using it, please check the box below:

I agree to the processing of my personal data for the purpose of creating a personal account on this site, in compliance with the Privacy Policy.

If you do not want us to continue processing your data, please click here to delete your account.

promotes the use of narcotic / psychotropic substances, provides information on their production and use;

contains links to viruses and malicious software;

is part of an organized action involving large volumes of comments with identical or similar content ("flash mob");

“floods” the discussion thread with a large number of incoherent or irrelevant messages;

violates etiquette, exhibiting any form of aggressive, humiliating or abusive behavior ("trolling");

doesn’t follow standard rules of the English language, for example, is typed fully or mostly in capital letters or isn’t broken down into sentences.

The administration has the right to block a user’s access to the page or delete a user’s account without notice if the user is in violation of these rules or if behavior indicating said violation is detected.